Netflix's Extraction Could Be The Start Of A New Shared Universe

A follow-up to the smash hit action film Extraction, which was produced by the Russo brothers and directed by Sam Hargrave, is already in the works. And now, it sounds like that might not be all. Recent comments made by one of the Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame directors hinted at the fact that the Chris Hemsworth-led Netflix original could be branching off into its own cinematic universe.

During an interview as part of a CCXP panel, Joe Russo was asked to clarify whether the next Extraction movie would be a sequel or a prequel. While Russo declined to give a definitive answer to that particular question, he did tease, "We are working at building out a universe of films that could potentially explore some of the other characters from the first movie and some new characters, and see... more historical interaction between the characters."

That's right: the Extraction Cinematic Universe (ECU) might on the way. And that wasn't the only breadcrumb of information that Joe dropped for fans. "If you're interested in David Harbour's character," he said, "you just may get to see him in a future Extraction film."

That is a very intriguing prospect, indeed. Joe also laid out how that particular character might fit into the overall storytelling approach to this possible film universe.

For those who need a refresher, in Extraction, Harbour plays a character named Gaspar, who is a former colleague of protagonist Tyler Rake (Hemsworth). When Tyler calls on him for help while trying to escape the city of Dhaka with Ovi (Rudhraksh Jaiswal), the son of a mob boss, Gaspar offers up his apartment as a hiding place for the pair. That is, until he finds out that there's a huge bounty on the kid's head. Fraternity goes out the door when Tyler forbids Gaspar from killing his charge, and the two former comrades come to blows. Ultimately, Gaspar goes the way of almost everyone else in the film — which is to say, he's brutally murdered.

Based on the Russos' approach to universe building, Gaspar dying in the first movie of their potential franchise isn't a barrier to him having his own spin-off. During the CCXP panel, Joe Russo explained, "We're trying to find more interesting ways to tell these stories... Can we go backwards and forwards at the same time? Can things that happened in the past affect the movies in the present?"

He went on to add, "What are new ways to tell those stories? And can we see different points of view? Every antagonist is the protagonist in their own story, so can we see their point of view? How do they perceive the world? What makes them empathetic?"

If those comments hold, then it looks like we could be getting a Gaspar anti-hero origin story of sorts, or even a prequel that fleshes out his doomed friendship with Tyler. Whichever direction the ECU ends up heading, it looks like Extraction fans will have a lot to look forward to in the coming years.